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COMBINE 2012: Annual Undergraduate Student Exhibition

November 26 - December 7

Finissage + Publication Launch - Friday December 7, 5-7 PM

America Blasco, Samantha, (Throwing Like a Girl), video still, courtesy of the artist

About

COMBINE 2012  is the 27th annual exhibition of Concordia University's Faculty of Fine Arts undergraduates. The exhibition includes a variety of media: photography, sculpture, drawing, video and installation. Juried by current and past coordinators of the student-run VAV Gallery, the assembled works demonstrate a broad spectrum of aesthetic and technical concerns, reveal current interests in contemporary art, and showcase an unparalleled vitality.

The exhibition is paired with a catalogue written by Department of Art History undergraduate students. The entries are overseen and copy-edited by Dr. Anna Waclawek, art history departmental coordinator, and Michel Hardy-Vallée. The catalogue is designed by undergraduate students under the guidance of Nathalie Dumont, associate professor in the Department of Design and Computation Arts.

Throughout this discursive project, the scope of creative practices within the Faculty is illuminated as it brings the participating undergraduate students into a professional and fully public realm.

Exhibiting Artists

Sophie-Anne Bélisle, America Blasco, Kevyn Durocher, Kandis Friesen, Emy Gagné St-Laurent, Simon Grenier-Poirier, Simon Larivière, Hélène Latulippe, Nicole Levaque, Jessica Monuk, Marlee Parsons, Aidan Pontarini, Melodie Reay, Laura Rokas, Alexis B. Rourke, Ingrid Tremblay, Feliz Tupe

Art Historian Writers

Katrina Caruso, Erika Couto, Clinton Glenn, Tess Juan-Gaillot, Adrienne Johnson, Katerina Korola, Pamela MacKenzie, Aditi Ohri, Raissa Paes, Mirka Parenteau, Eva-Loan Ponton-Pham, Pascal Robitaille, Amira Shabason, Emma Siemens-Adolphe, Angela Simone, Evan Stanfield, Florence Vallières

Publication Designers

Patrizia Bayer, Catherine Bisaillon, Camille Pomerleau-Lacasse

Concurrent Programming

Performance events are threaded throughout the exhibition run:

Marlee Parsons, Psychic Cell Readings

FOFA Gallery, EV 1-715

Psychic Cell Readings is a performance wherein the psychic, dressed in a lab coat, uses a microscope to analyze a client’s cells collected by cheek scrapping. Intimate conversations take place in the gallery as the magnified image of the cells are projected onto a nearby wall, visible to the client and other gallery visitors. This cellular analysis is intended to answer concerns, hopes, and fears of the clientele in relation to their future health. Wellbeing has been transformed by technological advancements to the effect of caching and displacing a personal awareness of health into the health-care system. This audience-participatory performance brings one’s notions of detrimental genetic heritage to the forefront as well providing psychological countermeasures taken to prevent illness. The performance remnants of business cards, glass slides and coverslips, methylene blue (cell stain), toothpicks and prescription notices will be available throughout the duration of the show as the “office” of the cell reader.

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Kandis Friesen, Etj Kjenn Nijch Plaut'dietsch
Friday November 30

12:00-1:00 PM

2:00-4:00 PM

5:00-7:00 PM
FOFA Gallery, EV 1-715

Etj Kjenn Nijch Plaut'dietsch1 is a performance and sound-based installation in dialogue with the work of Herman Rempel, author of the first Mennonite Plaut'dietsch (Low German) dictionary, titled Kjenn Jie Noch Plaut'dietsch?2. The focus of the work is an endurance-based audio performance, in which Rempel's voice is heard saying each word in the dictionary out loud, with the artist quickly repeating each word after him, a six-hour pedagogical exercise and rhythmic duet with Rempel's ghostly vocal recordings of the lexicon. Focusing on the technological and cultural infrastructures used to preserve and teach language, (and so, also, culture), Etj Kjenn Nijch Plaut'dietsch functions as a sort of failing, frail and futile monument to those who are working to preserve and animate the (mostly) dying Plaut'dietsch language through online, text-based, and oral means.

1 Translation: I Do Not Speak Mennonite Low German

2 Translation: Do You Speak Mennonite Low German? Rempel also put a version of the dictionary, and his audio files, online in the mid-nineties.

Preface to the catalogue

COMBINE is Concordia’s undergraduate fine art students’ most ambitious interdisciplinary, annual project. It is the result of a collaboration between distinct fine arts programmes. This year there is greater emphasis placed on this accompanying catalogue, with a design course being devoted solely to its production. In this way, the exhibition is expanding its reach to involve more undergraduate fine art students.

The catalogue is a work in and of itself. Art History students are invited to respond to the selected artworks, resulting in the following essays. This dialogue is an invaluable component of the exhibition: the writers are recording contemporary art in situ, as it is being produced. The exchange between undergraduate art historians and artists provides both parties with skills and experience to put towards their future professional exhibition practices. For an artist it is a courageous act to create, let alone submit your work to a jury. In spite of this, the exhibition received over a hundred application dossiers. The COMBINE 2012 jury’s diverse art focuses are evident in the final selection of works in the exhibition, which showcases an extensive range of distinctive art practices.

As the 2011 - 2012 VAV Gallery co - directors we were fortunate to be exposed to a vast variety of student work. This past year it was incredibly rewarding to work closely with student artists, and to witness the actualization of their creative ideas, from concept to studio production and finally, to their exhibition.

We wish to thank all of the involved artists, writers and designers, and above all the FOFA Gallery for its continued commitment to COMBINE.

- Eli Kerr, Zoe Koke, Courtenay Mayes and Emma Siemens-Adolphe

VAV Gallery Jury (2011-2012)

Links

Writings and Biographies

1. Author: Katrina Caruso, Artist: Sophie-Anne Bélisle
2. Author: Pamela MacKenzie, Artist: Aidan Pontarini
3. Author: Amira Shabason, Artist: Alexis Rourke
4. Author: Mirka Parenteau, Artist: Hélène Latulippe
5. Author: Raíssa Paes, Artist: Feliz Tupe
6. Author: Erika Couto, Artist: Ingrid Tremblay
7. Author: Emma Siemens-Adolphe, Artist: Marlee Parsons
8. Author: Tess Juan-Gaillot, Artist: Emy Gagné St-Laurent
9. Author: Evan Stanfield, Artist: Laura Rokas
10. Author: Florence Vallières, Artist: Simon Grenier-Poirier
11. Author: Adrienne Johnson, Artist: Melodie Reay
12. Author: Angela Simone, Artist: America Blasco
13. Author: Aditi Ohri, Artist: Jessica Monuk
14. Author: Clinton Glenn, Artist: Simon Larivière
15. Author: Katerina Korola, Artist: Nicole Levaque
16. Author: Eva-Loan Ponton-Pham, Artist: Kevyn Durocher
17. Author: Pascal Robitaille, Artist: Kandis Friesen

VAV Gallery Directors (2011-2012): Courtenay Mayes and Emma Siemens-Adolphe

External

VAV Gallery

Acknowledgements

The project recognizes the support of the Fine Arts Student Alliance, Translation Services in the Office of Research, and Art History faculty member and Department Coordinator, Dr. Anna Waclawek, last year’s VAV Gallery co-directors, Emme Siemens-Adolphe and Courtenay Mayes, and the Fine Arts Student Alliance.

© Concordia University